Storing baby clothes for future children, or perhaps even grandchildren, can seem daunting. Read on to discover easy and simple baby clothes storage tips. When it comes to the best way to store a baby’s clothes, it’s important to have a good system in place!
When we were expecting for the first time, we had a lot of people give us baby clothes. I had three separate baby showers where I received numerous baby clothes sets.
We were so excited to have it all because we were not only first-time
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We had two times the number of babies to clothe simultaneously. We knew we’d be doing a lot of additional laundry and cleaning and changing of clothes and removing of baby poop stains on baby clothes.
Even past the initial newborn and baby stage, amazing people continued to buy baby clothes or give us hand-me-down baby clothes. We greatly appreciated their generosity as we were so poor.
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We knew we wanted to have more children (we now have 5 kids) so we stored baby clothes in boxes as we moved from apartment to apartment and state to state and waited for another girl to grace our family someday.
Five years separate our twin girls and their younger sister, and another two and a half years between her and our baby girl.
It’s a great thing we stored baby clothes through all these years as it’s saved us hundreds of dollars! We don’t have to go out and buy new baby clothes unless we want to (like for family pictures).
However, because our first were twins, the amount of girl baby clothes in storage exceeded the number of clothes our singleton daughters actually need, especially because our singleton daughters were huge at birth (9lbs-11lbs).
Newborn-sized baby clothes didn’t fit either for more than a week or two (if they even wore it). We also did not need doubles of the same outfit or dress.
The amount of baby clothes storage we held was far too much, and I
Baby Clothes Storage
Declutter Baby Clothes Before Storing
I finally went through all of the girls baby clothes in storage and created keep, sell, donate, and toss piles.
There were so many clothes we didn’t love, that didn’t spark joy as Marie Kondo would say (and as the parents, we determined what sparked joy in terms of our baby’s attire and what didn’t).
The truth is our twins never even wore some of their clothes for one reason or another (
These stained and worn baby clothing pieces we decided to trash (for really stained or old items) or donate (check out my list of best places to donate clothes that don’t sell them so you can help another mom in need). We also donated duplicate twin outfits.
If you prefer to earn a little cash, you can sell gently used baby clothes online at swap.com or thredup.com.
If you prefer to sell locally, you can list items on Facebook Marketplace or
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Also, it is always wise to try and treat stained baby clothes before storing baby clothes and even before trying to donate or sell them (or trash them).
If items have baby poop stains on them, check out my post on how to remove baby poop stains on clothes (it’s amazingly easy, even for dried and set stains).
If the boxes you had your baby clothes stored in gave them weird stains, or they have weird yellow stains on them (maybe from formula or breastmilk or baby food) try doing an OxiClean soak. Oxiclean does wonders for old stains.
You can gently rub the stains after an hour of soaking in OxiClean, and then continue soaking overnight, then dump the water into the washing machine along with your regular detergent.
Then place the items to dry outside in the sunshine. Sun can bleach away a lot of stains! Don’t believe me? Then check out my post on removing yellow stains on stored baby clothes.
If that doesn’t work, try some bleach (if white) or color-safe bleaches to remove baby clothes stains.
If stains persist, it may be time to toss or donate them, unless you can identify what the stain is, and then try a different stain removal method.
Storage Solutions for Baby Clothes
Once you have determined what baby clothes you’d like to keep and store for future babies, grandbabies, or to give to a sister or other friend who plans to have children in the not too distant future, it’s time to figure out how to store baby clothes!
Baby Clothes Storage Bins
If you can afford to do so, I highly recommend investing in some nice plastic storage containers with snap lids.
According to The Spruce, it’s recommended they are made of cast polypropylene to be safe for archival purposes. Look for the #5 within the recycling triangle or the letters “PP” to be sure that you have the correct type of plastic that will not emit fabric-damaging chemicals.
We did these clear bins time around, as opposed to putting everything in moving boxes.
Moving boxes can get wet and destroy your clothes inside. They are also not as airtight so bug and dust and smells can creep in easier.
If you want long-term baby clothes storage, you really need to look into something better than cardboard boxes.
Storage Bags for Baby Clothes
If you want these in storage for a longer period of time, or want to conserve on space, you could also look into vacuum-packed plastic bags for storage the baby clothes.
If you wish to preserve certain baby clothes items as heirlooms (i.e blessing or baptism dresses or coming home from the hospital outfits), you can also look into archival garment storage boxes.
How to Store Baby Clothes
After carefully washing the baby clothes and removing stains, it is also recommended that you remove any metal buttons or fasteners from the clothes before storing, placing them in their own container alongside the clothes to reattach at later use.
The reason for this is that the metal corrodes over time, leaving ugly rust stains on clothes.
Next, you’ll next want to sort and organize baby clothes by:
- Gender
- Size
- Type
- Season
This means you may have a box of Girls 2T Winter Tops in one storage container, and Boys 3T Summer Pants in another.
How much organizing and separating you do is up to you and how many clothes you are storing and how big your storage containers are.
The basic gender and size (Girls 0-3months) is often enough for my purposes.
If you get clear storage containers for baby clothes, you can even put in a piece of archival paper on the inside with a label of what size clothes are inside the bin that is totally removable and changeable.
I put a piece of paper with gender and size on both an end and a side for easing reading when stacked.
Ideally, you will lay the clothing flat instead of folding the baby clothes as increased pressure over time along those folds could make those creases very difficult to remove later.
But, you can totally fit more clothes in a baby clothes storage container when you fold or roll the clothes first.
If you fold the clothes, fold them in places where they will be less noticeable, or along existing seams like bodices on dresses, seams on dress pants, etc.
For best archival practices, place a sheet of archival, acid-free, lignin-free tissue paper between each baby clothing storage item, and between each fold of the garments.
Make sure to put shoes and jackets in the totes too. As well as socks, underwear, hats, and other accessories for those ages. Heavy items should be placed toward the bottom so as not to put too much weight and pressure on the baby clothes.
Once the clothes are stacked in the baby clothes storage container of your choosing, it is a good idea to throw in a few mothballs or special cedar wood pieces or lavender to naturally deter insects. Just place them on top of tissue paper or in a satchel and not directly on the clothes.
For best results storing baby clothes, make sure you keep them in a dry, cool, humidity-controlled environment. This means you want to avoid attics, garages, and basements. The ideal spot is under a bed or in a closet.
Of course, you do whatever you want. I personally stacked closed bins in our garage and now in our basement.
I stacked the baby clothes storage tubs with the largest sizes on the bottom, and the smallest on the top so you can easily grab that size as your newest addition grows.
If possible, keep the very next size up bin in the child’s closet for easy access and swapping when the time comes.
It’s a good idea to inspect the clothes every year or so for stains or damages so you can fix it earlier. The longer a stain stays, the harder to get out!
Top Tips for Storing Kids’ Clothes
When it comes to your children’s clothing, remember these tips!
As long as the clothes are in good shape, save them for future use! Newborn clothes might come in handy again and the older kids will have good clothes that will work for the second baby or younger kids.
If you live in a small house, an easy way to store cute outfits is to use plastic storage bins that you can fit on the lower shelf in the bedroom closet or slide under the bed. (make sure that if you’re storing items on shelves that they’re not a hazard for falling down onto anyone – this is important!)
An important tip when you store items is that you will want to write the size range on the outside of the plastic bins so that you’re not digging through them all and making a mess. That’s one of the best hacks to remember!
Any outgrown baby clothes you can keep in plastic containers, too but make sure that you plan on saving them for the next child. if there is no next child, donate them or give them to friends.
I’d love to know what you have done for storing baby clothes long-term!
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